Friday, October 29, 2021

word; play; travel

Hola Halloween! and greetings to you Poetry Friday haunters! It's a big Friday for those of us in full-time classrooms or schools, so my participation in the Poetry Pals' monthly challenge will be InstaDraft-flavored and will begin with this paragraph snagged from Mary Lee's very organized blog.  Thanks, ML!

"The Poetry Sisters’ challenge for this month was to write Word Play poems, introduced to the Poetry Friday community in 2015 by Nikki Grimes as one of Michelle H. Barnes’ (Today’s Little Ditty) Ditty of the Month challenges. Laura Purdie Salas showed how the form might work in a classroom."

The essence is to explore a word "from top to bottom, and inside out, considering every aspect," which for me means not just exploring the thing the word names but the word itself: sound, texture, appearance on the page, literal and figurative meanings, related words.

My spouse, my son, my daughter have all been having adventures this fall: a trip to visit family in England after two full years apart; a gap semester in Costa Rica, a move to Brooklyn.  I've been sat right here at home except for that bike trek through New Jersey, and I'm craving TRAVEL.

Travel
 
Travel is a raveling word,
a labor of undoing. Try.
Take the loose end of your
tightly woven life and tug:
untangle, untie, untwist the
intricate knits, slip your stitches.

Cast off, cast away, fray.

Leap, frogging your way

unwound across mossed terrain

and tributary, untroubled

by the travail it takes. Needle

points to diamond and pearl.

It's hard to gauge the journey
from here. Adjust tension.
Reverse. The farther you go 
the deeper the unveiling.
Travel is an unraveling word.
InstaDraftTM ©HM 2021

Thanks to our host this week, Linda at TeacherDance. My costume will be a freshly knitted sweater dress and stockinettes. See you there!

[Disclaimer: I am not a knitter. I am, however, an interknetter.]

19 comments:

  1. I love your reflections on travel. Yes! That's just how it is! "Untangle, untie, untwist." I always love the reminder that where I live is not the whole world.

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  2. This is fabulous! As a knitter I totally get the way you have used knitting as an image of travel, and I love the line "Travel is an unraveling word." Beautiful!

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  3. I love this, Heidi!! Especially after having your biking adventure!!

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  4. Such a fitting comparison! I love how you speak to the reader. I am inspired by "Take the loose end of your / tightly woven life and tug." Must be time for a trip!

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  5. Oh, I LOVE this. The frogging. The casting off, the casting away! Unfortunately, the fraying... and raveling... All the things I forget about in my eons between bad knitting projects!! I may just stick to being an interknetter...

    I am fingers-crossed going to get back out there and travel soon... It's been too long.

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  6. I love it, too, Heidi. I will never look at the word "travel" again without thinking of "ravel". It is a thread over all these months that appears to have "slipped its stitches" for sure. But, if you missed an earlier post, my family did get to Belize in July - a new 'unveiling'! Happy Halloween in those stockinettes!

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  7. Heidi, your wordplay for "travel" is fabulous! "Travel is a raveling word" will stick with me!

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  8. "raveling" is an extraordinary way to start off this poem of travel. Love all the interesting verbs...makes me want to try casting off, leap-frogging, weaving, twisting, slipping stitches. Wonderful for a draft!

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  9. Such fun word play, Heidi! Thank you for this-- it's inspiring (and makes me want to set off on some travels!).

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  10. Thank you for this apt description of our recent trip to VT. Unraveling, indeed...in all the best ways.

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  11. I love the idea of the unraveling of travel. I long to travel, too, but am holding back. Love:

    Cast off, cast away, fray.
    Leap, frogging your way
    unwound across mossed terrain.

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  12. An Insta Draft! Wow, Heidi, it's so good, right from the start: "Travel is a raveling word." I am itching to travel, too, though we were able to get to Colorado for a few days for a wedding. So nice to soak up the beauty of the mountains out there for a few days.

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  13. Love the sound of travel with unravel, and the metaphor fits so well! Great fun!

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  14. Oh, this is wonderful, Heidi. Like so many, I love how you tapped into ravel within travel and all those other creative word play choices (especially frogging!) you made while continuing to sustain your knitting metaphor. Wow! My son just traveled to Colorado and mentioned how much he'd already forgotten about how impactful traveling is. I'd love to plan a trip, but for the moment am holding off on that. Still, it's fun to dream...

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  15. Oh my goodness, how much do I love this poem?! You've used one of my favorite things - knitting - to explore another of my favorite things - travel. I love how you've delved into what does travel do to us - how does it undo us - our ideas and perceptions - and how are we remade after the experience. Wonderful! Your instadraft is first rate IMO.

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  16. Travel, ravel, all the way to unravel, this poem spun me around and danced with me. Gosh I want to go somewhere, anywhere soon!

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  17. As I read your poem, I saw yarn. I love the play with travel/unravel. And it's a great instdraft.

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  18. Heidi, there is so much inspiration in your wordplay poem. I love the strength of your thoughts: a labor of undoing, adjust tension, reverse. Traveling is an unraveling word and I so want to be part of the journey.

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  19. Oh, this is amazing! And I can't believe how much knitting terminology there is in here for a non-knitter. I think those first four lines are brilliant!

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Thanks for joining in the wild rumpus!